For the present, not the future, we've been experimenting with doing this for a while and the large scale scalability issues in a blog with 86000+ posts in it. See http://blogs.semperen.com/nblog (RSS at http://blogs.semperen.com/nblog/feed) This is cached in a 10 minute interval so response time may appear to have a high variance. FWIW, there are considerable issues in tuning current blogging software for handling the number of posts in the historical NANOG forum, mostly because "normal" blogs allow one to get away with very sloppy SQL queries, joins, grouping, etc without. They perform well with several hundred posts. They don't with 86000+. We restructured a lot of the queries to improve performance and it is still a work in progress. With that said, use at your own risk and it may be unavailable from time to time as we continue to evolve it. I put this on the main list so those that want to read via RSS are at least aware there is an RSS version available. Part of my motivation for doing this is I was tired of everyone asking "can you remove this post, I really didn't mean that", etc. At least now, they can find the post and comment on it. When performance is where I like it, I want to add more NOG lists and operationally relevant mailing lists. Take a look if you like, but be gentle. It's a work in progress. Eric ekgermann@cctec.com
[bcc'd to nanog@nanog.org]
Call for Community Participation
The NANOG Steering Committee is interested in hearing feedback from the community about the following topic. Private comments may be sent to steering@nanog.org. Public discussion is encouraged, and should take place on the nanog-futures mailing list.
For information about subscription to the nanog-futures mailing list, see <http://www.nanog.org/email.html>.
Commentary on Current Events on the NANOG List
Many threads on NANOG begin with a bare reference to some article published elsewhere (e.g. a blog, or a news organisation web site). While some of these threads have undoubted relevance to network operations, others are certainly off-topic.
Some participants of the NANOG list have expressed frustration at the perceived off-topic chatter on the list resulting from these threads. Other participants have commented that they welcome the content. There is no clear majority opinion known to the NANOG Steering Committee.
A common medium for distribution of information such as those contained in these NANOG threads is the weblog. Blogs have established mechanisms for facilitating follow-up commentary from readers, and are also readily syndicated through RSS or e-mail.
Two notable such blogs already exist:
Fergie's Tech Blog <http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/>, an individual initiative of long-time NANOG contributor Paul Fergusson
Merit's SlashNOG <http://slashnog.merit.edu/>, a proof-of-concept discussion forum styled after Slashdot
The NANOG Steering Committee is interested in hearing the opinions of the community on this topic. For example:
1. Should current events/news bulletin-style threads be declared universally off-topic for the NANOG mailing list?
2. Should NANOG encourage, facilitate, or otherwise support a blog or similar forum for this content?
Please follow-up to the nanog-futures mailing list <http:// www.nanog.org/email.html> or send private commentary to the NANOG Steering Committee at <steering@nanog.org>.
Joe Abley (for the NANOG SC)